STANFORD, Calif., January 17, 2012— The Center for Internet and Society (CIS) at Stanford Law School today announced that its website will “go dark” (be taken offline) January 18, 2012 to raise awareness about the negative impact that proposed legislation — the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect I.P. Act (PIPA) — could have on free speech and Internet innovation. (The CIS website will be offline from 5:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Pacific time.)

Here is the text of that announcement, blogged by Anthony Falzone, executive director of the Fair Use Project at CIS:

Source: Center for Internet and Society

CIS Is Going Dark To Stop SOPA

A wave of opposition has crashed over the House’s Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Senate’s Protect I.P. Act (PIPA) based on the tremendous threat they pose to free speech and innovation online. It appears the House may be poised to abandon SOPA after the White House issued a statement making clear it would not support the bill. But the Senate is still pressing ahead with PIPA’s most dangerous provisions intact, including those that would force internet service providers to block access to entire sites through DNS blocking and other means that threaten both the universality and the security of the internet itself.

If this legislation passes — in this version or another — legitimate websites will be threatened. Some will disappear. Tomorrow, the CIS website will disappear (along with many others) to protest the misguided approaches SOPA and PIPA employ, and to demonstrate the threat they pose. We’ll be back on Thursday. In the meantime, read up on the dangers these bills pose, and what you can do to make a difference.

If you want take your site down, here are some tools from CloudFlare and Webmonkey that make it easy.